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Monthly Archives: March 2014

Week one of working as an English teacher at a college is done. It’s been so long since I’ve worked in a professional environment like this that I’ve mislaid the feeling associated to starting somewhere new.

It’s been an overload of information, as expected, delivered in bite-size chunks; people, their names and faces, their roles and their stories, their smiles and their helpfulness; navigation of the actual building itself and not yet enjoying the privilege of using a “staff only” bathroom; the students, hundreds of 25 year old + students from every part of the world, typically happy and eager to communicate; the procedures, registers, online systems, lesson plans, board use etc.

What’s more is the feeling of achievement and that tired feeling in the evenings, one that depicts brain usage, a satisfying and hard earned tiredness. Something I haven’t felt for a while, well I have felt tired but not with a sense of accomplishment preceding it.

Seeing early mornings too has made me appreciate them more, but I’m most certainly a night person. My attention is at its best and I’m at my most alert and creative. My face is more awake and the tired droop of dark circles vanish.

I don’t want to wish this job away because it will provide me the opportunity to finally do what I want, but I’m already imagining a few thousand in the bank, a feeling of dread as I look out to the planes on the runway before I take off, the sadness of leaving a family that I’ve become all too accustomed to being around coupled with the excitement that goes with possibilities and adventure. I remain focused on this goal, which has been and is being achieved by meeting smaller, personal goals along the way.

All I know is things are changing; inside of me, around me, outside, my mentality. I feel somewhat at peace with where I am now and I acknowledge that this feeling has taken some time and arduous inner battles to reach, and that is could also be temporarily lived. Ultimately, it could disappear again soon, that’s the nature of us, humans, but overall this feeling has been brought on by change, meeting my goals, personal achievement and earning my own way.

Long may this continue and here’s to reaching that next step in my self-development.

Yeah. You know the one. That little craving that spurs itself on inside the stomach, acquainted though uninvited. It purrs and claws at your guts while you feign a smile toward the unknown. Yeah. You know the one. That sickly churning, washing machine mechanism of you’re not quite sure; of bewildering light below the sunset at the end of that symbolic American dual carriageway. The destination to your answers. Yeah. You know the one. That mystical wizardry, pointy hat embellished with half crescents visibly bobbing up and down through the thick smog of mystery, caverned within the confines of a cosy, wooded camp fire. Yeah. You know the one. The lick of stranger whilst blindfolded having never met before, and boy, what an introduction. Walking the plank in to the depths of uninhibited salty pleasures, unbeknown to you what lies beneath the crystal clear covers. Yeah. You know the one. You know it as much as I do. You know that you know not of it.